


A Red Lover

by EllieMarchetti



Series: Red Queen AUs [3]
Category: Red Queen Series - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21747535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMarchetti/pseuds/EllieMarchetti
Summary: Thomas survives the incident at the front, finding out he's a newblood who can absorb skills and use them at his will.
Relationships: Maven Calore/Thomas
Series: Red Queen AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1523258
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. The Awakening

As he fell, he saw nothing but flames; they were everywhere, meeting him, crackling and sizzling as they destroyed all the memories they had managed to build before reaching the front. He was sure that not even a charred mush would remain of him, that his bones would turn to ashes, and there wouldn’t be a grave where people could cry for his loss. He bang his head against something, and in his field of vision appeared a thousand shiny stars. In fact, they weren’t stars but sparks. His uniform caught fire, carbonized, began to smoke, but it didn’t happen to his skin, and he felt no pain but the sparks’ heat, as if they were going through his body, as if they were tickling his nerves. It wasn’t a bad feeling to try before he died: he felt alive like never before, like a blind man who finally came back to see after a long time. He sensed something moving inside him, but it was no longer just the sparks: it was the whole flame, which slid over him, blackened his clothes leaving the skin intact. The flames were trying to kill him without succeeding. It was all wrong, obviously; he shouldn’t have been alive, he wouldn’t have to get a big cloud of black smoke around him, the floor wouldn’t have to start crunching and the walls wouldn’t have to crack. The fire became clearer and more aggressive, but after a while, it weakened, making Thomas feel stronger. It didn’t matter that he was falling again, that three floors of that area of the building had been destroyed, or that he was almost naked. It didn’t matter because he landed on a pile of dust, or perhaps ashes, definitely battered, with sore muscles, but undoubtedly alive. He stood up with difficulty, the clothes that continued to fall apart. Above him, inside the building, in the areas that hadn’t been touched by the explosion, someone was looking at that havoc. How many had died because of Maven? Then he turned, sensing other looks, this time pointed at him, a red boy who had escaped that ruckus. Watching him, there were two guys: one was taller and thinner, and the other more sturdy and stocky, but the differences between the two seemed to end there. They definitely had to be brothers. Both had wide eyes. One seemed angry, the other confused. Then their expressions changed: the biggest seemed scared, and Thomas wondered how it was possible. He was thin and pale, nobody feared him.

“He’s one of us.” instead said the taller, the look drawn by a small scratch on the back of his right hand. Then he didn’t fully understand what else happened, he only knew that the boy approached and in a moment he found himself very far from there, in a place that with time he would’ve learned to define a house, among people who for those like Maven had envisaged only one destiny: death.

Farley left him in a corridor, to ruminate on her words: he had always thought that there was only the distinction between reds and silvers, kings and slaves, and instead he discovered that there was much more, a range of nuances that he didn’t understand, in which he had precipitated unwillingly. He grew up wondering if he could have dinner every night, like any other red, and now he found himself in a place full of red with full bellies and enough energy to be able to fight against the silver. He had to choose and he had to do it quickly. Would he join the Scarlet Guard, ready to sacrifice himself and everything he wanted to reach the infamous common goal, or would he continue a life that he no longer had? Thomas knew that, after all, there was no choice: he couldn’t go back to the front, he couldn’t go home, and he wouldn’t even be able to live far from there, because when the silvers are on you, there’s no far enough place. So he accepted that same evening, certain that he had just launched himself into a business that would’ve eaten him alive.

He realized he wasn’t wrong only three years later, when Farley dragged him around midnight into a greenhouse in the Royal Palace. She didn’t explain anything to him, only that they had found new, important members for the Guard. They hid in the greenhouse in four: Thomas, Farley, Kilorn, a new recruit who seemed ready to sell his soul to please someone important in the Guard, and another girl, who carried a big assault rifle with her. She had to have little aim.

“Excuse me if I don’t do the reverence.” Farley said, emerging from a grove of magnolias where she was hidden with Thomas, upon the arrival of two figures. One was Walsh, he had heard of her and had even seen her, sometimes, and the other was a girl younger than him, not so tall, thin and definitely not silver. It didn’t take a genius to understand it, yet he noted that someone had given her special care. She had to be Mareena, the one everyone talked about. Her real name was Mare, and she was like him.

“Farley.” she said, greeting the Scarlet Guard’s captain. Therefore, they must have already met. He suspected it. Farley didn’t return the greeting, asking Walsh where the other was. Thomas had originally believed it was some red, someone who worked in the palace, but no one had ever been so excited for a simple recruit. Was him a newblood that had managed to stay hidden all that time?

“What does that mean? Who else joined?” Mare asked, too loudly, for Thomas’s tastes, but not wrongly. He didn’t like all that secrecy and certainly wasn’t excited at the idea that someone else would arrive there at any moment, with the possibility of a betrayal.

“Maven.” Thomas heard his own voice whisper. He had grown up, but it was undeniably him. He didn’t know whether to scream with joy, to see him alive, or run away, because the last time he was next to him, he almost risked dying. He was a prince, a silver, the enemy, and yet here he was, along with Farley. Thomas felt his heart burst with joy. He had stifled his love for Maven long ago, had abandoned those stupid fantasies of a kid when he had taken the oath of the Guard. Holland, his companion, a red servant of a certain age, with many years of service behind him, seemed to burst with pride.

“Mare, I told you you’re not alone.” Maven said, and his voice was so different, that Thomas almost felt a stab in his stomach. He kept his hands on his hips and contracted them: he seemed nervous, probably because of Farley. Not that it was difficult to understand why: the girl had approached with a gun in her hand, almost as nervous as he was, but her voice was firm and decisive. Thomas remained hidden, even though he was sick of being just a spectator. He wanted to tell him that he was proud of him, he wanted to tell him that he remembered everything they had said six years ago, yet he stayed still, to keep his place in the Guard, because he was too used to taking orders. Farley, however, didn’t move an inch, causing Thomas’s blood to freeze in his veins. Weren’t his words enough? What did she want more? Then, as if he had always known, Maven started talking again. He spoke of when he was twelve and his father sent him to the front, to temper him, to make him look more like Cal. Thomas felt a lump in his throat as he pulled out secrets that had only revealed to him, feelings that a prince should never have felt. Farley, however, snorted. Thomas never shared this abrupt and mean way; he believed there were better ways to inspire trust and loyalty, he believed that reigning through fear was something silver do, but he would never say it. He knew that she had lost so much, but Thomas hadn’t really been a privileged in life, yet his heart hadn’t dried up like that.

“I don’t need a jealous kid.”

“It’s not jealousy that pushed me here.” Maven corrected her, and Thomas smiled. He hadn’t changed so much, after all. “I spent three years in a camp to follow Cal, the officers and generals, watching the soldiers die and fight a war in which no one believed.”

Thomas closed his eyes, trying to shake off the nightmares. There was no honor or loyalty, whence he came, only madness and destruction, rivers of blood poured from both sides of the border.

“And our people have given so much more,” Maven continued, implacable. He spoke like a river in flood that can no longer be dammed, and he spoke of a boy who was only seventeen, red and came from the cold north. He was speaking of him.

“You should have told me!” thundered Thomas, on the way back. Farley didn’t even deign to look back at him.

“You knew everything, I told you everything!”

His anger was unstoppable, but fortunately, no one tried to use any kind of power in the vicinity, or he wasn’t sure he would be able to restrain himself, once he started his revenge against the captain.


	2. The Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The attack on the Hall of the Sun and the imprisonment

Thomas was posted, along with three other snipers, in the niche of a window. They were nothing but shadows to which no one would give importance, which not even the guards would’ve noticed, and such would remain, even once the act was done, even once the silvers were killed. Too quickly, it was time to shoot. Thomas had a perfect aim, but they had entrusted him with a magnetron, and a powerful one, moreover, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw the bullet directed at Ptolemus Samos’ heart pierce his shoulder. Not that he had time to cry on himself: the silvers had begun to scream, the lights blinking above their heads. When they completely shut down, Thomas knew that they had only one minute to reach the sewers along with everyone else. A minute wasn’t much, but it would be enough to get confused in the midst of the screams, among those people who were trying to escape from the odds.

“In the niches near the windows!” a voice thundered above the terrible din.

“They are fleeing!” added other voices, and Thomas couldn’t explain that surprised tone. Did they really believed they would let themselves be so easily caught?

“Seek them out!” shouted a sentinel on the balcony, the shotgun aimed right at his head. He wouldn’t shoot, Thomas was sure: after all, he was nothing but a shadow.

“Stop them!” other figures rapidly approached, and it must have been the royal guard. A blaze rose in the crowd and twisted in the air like a snake of fire. It was still too far away, but if the king tried to kill him, he would savour the taste of fire and ash. Leading the group that reached them wasn’t a normal sentinel, nor a member of the royal guard, but the crown prince himself, a gun in one hand and the flame ready to cook them alive in the other. If only Tristan hadn’t been shot in the leg, they would’ve managed to run away, and he would never have crossed those amber-red eyes, so different from his brother’s. Cal Calore was a real hunter, and Thomas wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that among his favorite activities there was red hunting. It wasn’t something that really existed, at least he believed, and he was amazed: the silvers were sadistic by nature and saw the reds as beasts, so it was strange that none of them decided to take some reds prisoners and release them in a reserve, giving them the possibility, the hope, of being able to escape, when, however, in a group, they would’ve only vented their skills on him. Or maybe they already did it, but the news hadn’t yet leaked. In any case, Cal Calore was the perfect candidate: he snarled orders, running as if he needed them for his own life, with sentinels and security agents who could only try to keep up with him, like a trail of red and black smoke that follows the flame. There was almost no battle: they dragged them into a dark service corridor, and weren’t distracted even when the floor began to tremble beneath their feet. They weren’t afraid of dying; they were trained to be the kind of invincible machines that doesn’t step back in front of death. The door before them blew up, destroyed by the flames, which Cal, as Maven called him, absorbed into his own hand as if nothing had happened. The ballroom was still shrouded in smoke and flames, but Cal seemed implacable, determined to extinguish even the slightest chance of a fire, and to want to increase his strength, as Thomas had done at the front, years ago. He would’ve paid for Cal Calore to decide to use that damn flame on him. They crossed at least three more doors, and then descended a long stairway that seemed to lead directly to the Hall of the Sun’s bowels. They threw them into a cell, regardless of Farley’s dislocated shoulder or Tristan’s leg. But what did it matter to them? They were traitors and soon they would have interrogated and executed them. When the bars closed behind them, Cal disappeared as quickly as he had arrived, leaving them alone with the masked sentries. They made the prisoner shiver, but no more than all the other things that lurked in that building. Not long after, the prince returned, accompanied by his wife, a tornado of anger dressed up for the party, the father, the king himself, and two other figures walking behind them. Undoubtedly, one must be Mare. So their game ended so quickly? Did that newblood betray them so quickly? Next to her, holding her hand, there was Maven, his pale skin in perfect contrast to the girl’s more amber one. Whatever torture they had decided to impose on him would hurt him less than those tenderly entwined fingers, even in a situation like that. Then Maven turned, and scanned their faces, Walsh’s swollen eyes, Tristan’s blooded leg, which Thomas had bandaged with Kilorn’s shirt, Kilorn himself, miraculously unharmed, just like him, and Farley, with the dangling arm, leaning on the newblood’s friend. Only in the end, their eyes crossed, exactly when Farley decided it was time to try to spit on the future queen. Everyone was distracted by that scene, which gave Maven a few extra seconds to recover from that discovery. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it, but he had left Mare’s hand, while Cal asked her why a friend of her was at court, together with the Scarlet Guard, and had taken a step forward, towards the cell, as if to reach him. Thomas looked at him sadly, but said nothing, not even when he commented absently that they really looked like servants. It had always been like that: he had to pretend not to care about him, and there was always something between them, this time was the bars of a prison, once it was the blood status. Cal gave a brief account of how things had gone, and Thomas found himself pleasantly surprised to hear that he wasn’t lying. The silvers’ world was built on a mountain of lies, and finding a sincere one was a rarity. Maven had never lied to him, but Thomas knew that he was a great liar. All thanks to his mother: she believed in the mental manipulation as a way to make him stronger, to make him the loyal little dog she always wanted, instead she had created something that, if triggered in the worst way, could be a real monster. Even Evangeline, in her annoying voice, had interfered in the conversation, suggesting that perhaps it was time to torture them. Thomas didn’t move, but he saw that Maven was fumbling for a way out of that situation. He smiled internally. As long as it was possible, he had always tried to protect him, but he should’ve known well that now there was no way to do it. Those were years in which he could no longer protect him.

* * *

If only he had been lucid, if only he could come up with a credible lie… But how could Farley have done such a thing? And Thomas? How long had he been hiding with the Scarlet Guard? Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be able to watch while they tortured him, screaming in pain. Perhaps Thomas believed he knew the suffering, after the front, but among the silvers things weren’t so simple and suffering was a relative concept, because for them the reds weren’t people, but only sacrificial pawns, toys that once broken were replaced. It seemed that Thomas could read his thoughts while he looked at him with those piercing green eyes. Even in that horrible place, they shone. It was perhaps what attracted him more, that spark of life that others didn’t have. Everyone on the front seemed to have lost hope, but not Thomas: he believed he would come out alive, and for this Maven was pushed toward him like iron with a magnet. Because he was the first to not feel alive, he was the one who didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel that was his life, but Thomas seemed to see it for him. And in that situation, despite, eventually, his brother would come to torture him too, Thomas silently swore to him that he would lie to him, that even if they had frozen his blood in his veins, and had torn and cured him to exhaustion, a word wouldn’t have come out of his lips.

“You don’t need to watch the scene.” Maven muttered, turning to Mare, but above all to have an excuse not to hear Thomas screams, not to add that sound to the terrible nightmares he already had. Yet he couldn’t abandon him, not now that he had found him. Mare shifted him angrily and kept her gaze on Kilorn. Even Maven was unable to stop looking at Thomas.

“Let her look.” croaked Evangeline. She seemed to take pleasure in their malaise. “So she learns to treat reds as friends.”

When she said it, however, she didn’t look at Mare, but at him. What did the magnetron know? Maven froze as he watched her spread the bars of the cell with a wave of her hand. With a white finger, she pointed to Farley.

“Start with her, cut her apart.” she said to the sentry, who nodded, grabbed Farley by the wrist and dragged her out of the cell, regardless of her pain. The bars closed behind her, trapping the others back inside. Walsh and Kilorn rushed toward the metal bars, both the portrait of fear, while Thomas didn’t move. He knew what would happen, he knew that eventually his turn would come, and he knew that there was no way to escape, not from there, not at that moment. Maven felt a sense of pride in his stoicism: he showed no fear, just like a true leader. Just like Farley, kneeling, with her mouth closed and her teeth tight, ready to die in silence.

“Start from the arm.” Cal ordered, and Maven didn’t need to see the little red circles appear on the girl’s white skin to know what the Gliacon sentinel was doing. Even Mare, at a certain point, had to look away.

“That’s blood.” she whispered, and Maven, if not for his immense self-control, would have slapped her. What did she think it was? Why was she so appalled? Torture was still torture, which would cause the blood to freeze or someone to rummage in your head. A torture, by definition, wasn’t pleasant, and the silvers were sadistic enough to imagine at night the tortures they could inflict on the reds only to facilitate sleep. For some of them, their shouts were music, for some of them, death was just an unpleasant inconvenience. They were murderers, and of the worst kind. And yet, even the Guard had blood on their hands, probably even that of innocents, because if the silver didn’t see the reds point of view, the reds, for their part, didn’t understand that not all the silver were the same.

“That’s enough.” Cal ordered coldly, also tearing Maven from his thoughts. Another sentinel, a healer of the Skonos family, crouched beside Farley, who seemed about to collapse. With an absent gaze, Maven watched her arm return to a normal color, imagining Thomas in her place, his skin pierced by a myriad of frozen blood blades. He felt like throwing up.

Farley smiled sadly: “Just to be able to do it all over again, isn’t it?” she asked, her big blue eyes turned toward Cal, who turned pathetically towards his father in search of consent. That was the big fault of his half-brother: he always needed someone to tell him what to do. Maven was sure he would be a bad king.

“That’s right.” he said with a sigh, and Maven felt pity for him. It was another feeling that his mother had tried to take away from him, but from time to time, it returned to the surface. Cal had never wanted to be king; he had never loved that kind of thing. He was a soldier, and he was comfortable among soldiers like him, strategists with a sharp mind and full of intuitiveness.

“Where is she?!” shouted a terrifying voice behind them, and Maven took off his path before Ptolemus Samos could invest him with his anger; he wouldn’t care if he was the prince, he would’ve landed him anyway. He didn’t even cared for the heir, which he dodged, causing him to stumble backwards. He didn’t even have mercy on Evangeline.

The bars creaked and gave way, and the cell opened. Not even the sentries managed to restrain him; he advanced with too decisive and quick steps. Kilorn and Walsh backed against the wall, and Maven shuddered with terror: Thomas was already with his back against the wall. Ptolemus, however, was a predator, and as such, attacked the weaker: with an injured leg and unable to move, Tristan had no hope.

“You will never risk my sister’s life again.” the magnetron roared. Maven saw his eyes only for a moment, but it was enough: Ptolemus wanted to kill them all. Before he could react, Mare’s hands lit up with sparks, and before Ptolemus could see it, a lightning struck him. The electric discharge made him waver, while the metal of his armor sizzled, beginning to smoke. Maven was grateful that Mare had been faster than he had: it would have avoided many problems but, above all, many uncomfortable questions.

Only when Ptolemus collapsed on the ground, convulsing, Mare recalled her lightning. Evangeline was immediately by his side, and she tried to caress her brother’s face, but she took the shock and was forced to back off with an angry grimace. Maven would’ve been willing to let himself be electrocuted, so that he could touch Thomas, even if only for a brief moment.

“How dare you!” Evangeline shouted, but again, even before his intervention was necessary, Mare saved herself. He liked that prerogative, although sometimes it frightened him.

“My mother, the queen, can take care of the prisoners later.” Maven said, before the moment of silence could end. “But the people above will want to see their king,” he continued, this time looking only at his father. “know that he’s safe.”

If that farce worked, they would have gained time.

“So many people are dead, father.” he resumed, after a pause that served to impress his words in the mind of his interlocutor. His mother was a monster, but she had also taught him something about speaking skills. In a sense, from time to time, he was grateful to her, but it was probably another of the things she had positioned in his head. It was exhausting, living that way, and yet he had to do it, he had to keep asking himself whether a thought, an idea, even a feeling, were his or his mother’s, if it was all fiction or if he really had managed to break away from her control for one moment. Another of the reasons why Thomas’s memory was untouchable: Elara hadn’t had the chance to bribe it, even if she wanted to.

“It is good that you give comfort to those who remain.” Maven concluded, but he was no longer talking about the court or to his father. He recovered quickly, however, and switched to Cal, telling him that even the heir to the throne would’ve to go. He almost smiled at seeing his perplexed reaction, when Mare said he was right. She was also insightful, the girl. If he hadn’t loved Thomas, he might have liked her too. Silver blood dripped from Mare’s sleeve, leaving a trail of droplets behind them as they headed toward the throne room. If someone had decided to follow that macabre trail, he could have seen the prisoners, and two sentries to guard them. Maven wondered how his father could underestimate again the strength of the Scarlet Guard, but then he remembered that they were all unarmed, with a fallen man to mourn and a seriously injured boss. Other sentinels and security guards guarded the immense doorway, with guns pointed towards the corridor. When they passed, they stood motionless. His brother could’ve been one of them. They were ordered to kill, if necessary, but it would never really be their fault, only those who ordered them to do so. It was a luxury that a king couldn’t afford, a luxury that not even Maven had. Beyond the threshold, in the immense majestic hall, echoed anger and despair. Maven would’ve liked to rejoice, at least a little, for the victory obtained, but the image of Thomas behind the bars dampened any enthusiasm. He had to think of a way to get him out of there, and the others could burn, for how much he cared. He followed Mare, who held his hand, and dragged him near Cal, who began to list, atonic, the number of dead and wounded, among whom the healers shuttled. Maven looked at the faces of two wounded children, who was the first to be healed, and a little further at the corpses, lying before the throne. Bellicos Lerolan’s twins lay beside him, while their mother cried in despair and watched over the bodies of her broken family. Maven held a moan. He had sold him, not his offspring. Yet it was the best decision, because children deprived of parents become vindictive, and those oblivion twins could be a big problem for the Scarlet Guard, within a decade. Not that the Scarlet Guard believed they were going to waste so much time to take over the silvers, but Maven had studied a minimum of strategy with his brother, and the first rule was always not to underestimate the enemy, and in his opinion it was just what they were doing. He moved Mare away from that gruesome scene, leading her to their place, next to the throne.

“The time of tears is over,” Tiberias thundered, and Maven found himself thinking that he surely wouldn’t have started the speech that way, not when in front of them there were still the corpses of whom had lost their lives because of what he would later was obliged to call madness.

“Those terrorists, those murderers, will be brought to justice.”

Maven heard only excerpt of that pathetic speech. He was thinking of Thomas, of how he would never have allowed him to die, how, he swore to himself, he would’ve sacrificed anything to keep him from being tortured. He had already suffered too much and certainly didn’t deserve what was going to happen to him.

“Power!” the court shouts. Maven remains motionless, while the acrid smell of blood oppresses his lungs.

“Power! Death!”

Maven turned wide-eyed towards Mare, in desperate search for a help she couldn’t give him. Now, what would be his next move?


	3. The Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mare frees the prisoners but Maven doesn't share her course of action.

“Who is there?” shouted a sentinel from the beginning of the stairs, facing someone who was supposed to be on the way down. She was the Gliacon, the one who had tortured Farley. Thomas wanted to see her crash into the ground after a long and exhausting fall from some of the cliffs there was in his hometown.

“I am Lady Mareena Titanos, betrothed to Prince Maven.” a cold, sharp voice answered. Thomas, on hearing that name, immediately raised his head. He couldn’t yet see Mare, but he was sure she wouldn’t come down there alone. In fact, although the first figure to appear was hers, two men stood behind her, one who had largely exceeded forty, with pale skin even to be a silver, and another younger, with a baldhead and black eyes, his expression like he was turned off. If it weren’t for his skills, he would’ve mistaken that look for boredom. Thomas almost let out a smile. So it was true that there was still a singer alive. He had long believed it was just a legend. It was a strange feeling, that of having a singer who used his power in the direct vicinity: it was like seeing a mind held on a leash. It was both fascinating and horrible. If only Thomas could have used that power…

He observed with amazement the sentinels that went out in single file, without batting an eyelash further. They said they would leave her for five minutes. If Mare had hurried, only three would’ve been enough.

Kilorn rushed to the bars, while Farley helped Walsh get up. Thomas didn’t move; from the expression on Mare’s face, he realized that she didn’t intend to free them, not yet.

“Mare…” Kilorn whispered, displaced by her hesitation. Thomas, for his part, knew what she wanted to know, and wasn’t surprised when she asked for explanations about the bomb.

“I don’t know anything about it.” Farley hissed in a whisper. The torture had neither folded nor broken her, but had certainly changed her, someway. “I’ve never authorized such a thing.”

As far as Thomas knew, that was the truth, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she was lying. She did it continuously. To omit the truth was a gift for her. Thomas gritted his teeth. He hadn’t yet forgiven the incident with Maven.

“Where’s Maven?” Thomas asked, interrupting Farley, and gaining a cold look from those blue eyes. Mare frowned, and Thomas realized she didn’t know about their situation.

“He won’t take part in this mission.” she answered, cold. Thomas frowned: he thought it was Maven who wanted to save him. He believed he was more important for him. He studied Mare’s face, while she was talking, annoyed, to Farley. There was something in those eyes that wasn’t right. It wasn’t the control of the singer, nor even feelings that he couldn’t understand: they were as cold as ice. She had the same look of a Silver. Perhaps she was also starting to think like one of them and he couldn’t say if that ability would benefit them or bring them to ruin.

* * *

Maven stood before Mare on the way to her etiquette lessons, trying to hold back his anger to prevent the cameras from resuming his failure.

“You got up early.” he noted, so that anyone who took the trouble to control him could hear. Mare’s expression was surprised, but only for a second, then she smiled ruefully. Maven knew that it was time to approach her, to be able to speak more freely, and pretend to greet her with a kiss on the cheek. And so he added, in a faint voice: “To have gone to bed so late.”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.” she answered, trying to simulate an innocent tone. It wasn’t very credible, and Maven took her arm. In the eyes of the cameras, they were just a couple of betrothed that moved away, towards the lessons of the future princess, and no one would’ve noticed Maven’s quick pace.

“The four prisoners escaped.” he said, in a higher tone, hoping the cameras can record that part. He paused, and waited a couple more steps to add, in a much lower voice: “And I know it’s your fault.”

“Fault?” Mare asked, the voice too high, and trying to stop, perhaps to argue more blatantly. Maven tugged at her, and ignored her moaning of pain. She would’ve deserved more, and surely, she would’ve received much worse treatment if he had told his mother everything.

“Yes, fault.” hissed Maven, so quietly that he was afraid that Mare hadn’t heard him.

“The incident is somewhat suspicious,” he added aloud. It must have seemed that he was merely informing her. He didn’t care what was going to happen to Mare, but he was sure that if they took her, she would probably give in, revealing his betrayal. Once, perhaps, he could’ve lain, saying he was only playing both sides, but since he had seen Thomas again, he couldn’t think of anything but him, what his treason might’ve meant for his life.

“The dead cameras, the flaw in the security system, not to mention a group of sentinels who complain of large memory blackouts.” Maven listed all the points against her, without the slightest effort, without even thinking about how much pain she felt. She was a bad strategist, and she had to know. He couldn’t allow her to do it again. He turned abruptly, and dragged her into a disused room. As he recalled, there were no cameras installed. He slammed her back against the wood of the door, and stared at her earnestly, waiting for her to apologize. It didn’t happen, but she asked him restlessly if his mother had interrogated them. Maven nodded.

“And she will talk…” Mare began, and seemed to ponder well the words, before pronouncing them “…of the escape with someone else? Agents, guards…?”

Maven shook his head. “You did a great job, but I had to direct my mother’s suspicions on specific people, the only ones who could have done something like that.”

Mare looked relieved, and held him in a hug that Maven struggled to reciprocate. He wasn’t used to that kind of effusions, and those rare times when Mare gave him one, he felt a strange sensation, a kind of warmth that he had felt only with Thomas. Of course, it wasn’t so overwhelming, but it was still a good feeling.

“Thank you.” she whispered in his hear. Maven felt a wave of guilt go up his stomach. She should’ve wait, before thanking him.


	4. To Lose and To Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas feels that something is wrong with Maven but cannot identify what, while Maven cannot say goodbye before the greatest betrayal

Thomas sat in the cafeteria, waiting, unable to stop thinking about something other than Maven. He was well aware of the staring looks thrown at him by Mare’s friend, Kilorn, and yet he didn’t care: he would finally see Maven, talk to him, and ask him everything he had never had the courage to ask when they were still at the front, when no one would ever consider them two peers. When they entered, Thomas barely noticed Farley and Mare’s presence, his eyes captured by the prince’s figure.

“Finally.” he let slip, preceding a possible comment by Kilorn, but Farley silenced him with a glare and Thomas had to hold back his enthusiasm until the end of the meeting, when Maven alluded to the possibility that his brother was in love with Mare and that the girl could reciprocate his feeling.

“Do you really want me to base my entire operation, the whole revolution, on a teenager’s love?” Farley mocked him. Yet at that table she received not the slightest support, with Kilorn staring at Mare with a strange expression on his face and Maven and Thomas who seemed to drown in each other’s eyes. When Mare and Maven were taken away, Thomas slowly came back to the building from which he had only emerged a few hours earlier, crawling his feet on the ground and dusting all the heavy leather boots. He would’ve liked to have a moment with him, yet he had gained nothing but a fleeting handshake. He felt frustrated, and his temples pulsed obsessively. He wondered when he would be able to see him again, if, with that crazy plan, it would ever happen. Perhaps it was all that noise in his mind that prevented him from immediately hearing Farley’s footsteps; she was following him at safe distance, trying to study every move he made.

“I know what you want to ask me.” Thomas said, without turning back and face her. She didn’t replied, but he knew she heard him.

“I don’t love him anymore.”

It was a lie, but with the Scarlet Guard’s help he had become a good liar. He wouldn’t lied if he didn’t realized that Farley suspected his loyalty, given his past with the silver prince. As much as Maven had helped them, and as much as his help had made the Guard take giant steps, Farley was still skeptical.

“I don’t even know who he is anymore.” he added, and perhaps, after all, that wasn’t a lie. Everything in Maven reminded him of who he loved, but it was also all different, after all that time. He kept walking, in silence, until he realized that there were no more steps behind him. He let a single, silent tear fall down his right cheek, which traced a rough path on his delicate face covered in dust. Because deep in his heart, he knew that something deeply wrong was going to happen, but he still couldn’t understand what.

* * *

When the moment finally came, Maven believed that he was ready, that he had made a choice that would lead him to the only possible solution. Therefore, he opened the door of his room only when Mare knocked, and realized from the girl’s expression that she shouldn’t feel good. He felt nothing but frost: around him, in his bones, in his mind. It was yet another gift from his mother. Few, distressing minutes, and they were out. They walked in the dark, hidden by the shadows, heading for the agreed place, between the building and the outer walls. They couldn’t have chosen a better position: from there they could see Caesar Square and the bridge, and in addition, a large slice of the golden roof of the War Command hid them from the sight of the patrols. Farley came out of a manhole on time and didn’t accept the hand that Mare held out to help her rise. Typical of that girl. By now, Maven had understood her attitude. Sadly, he realized that Thomas hadn’t followed her, as was often the case. He had to be underground, along with the others. Maybe it was better this way: there he would’ve had at least one chance. After all, they were armed, and he was a newblood, even though Maven still didn’t understand what he was capable of doing. Not that it made any difference: he would lose him, whatever the power that had saved him at the front was. As much as Thomas was a fighter, he would have no choice that day: either escape or death. Maven looked unnecessarily in the tunnel, looking for his green eyes, but the darkness seemed to swallow the mouth of the gallery, hiding him and everyone else. Again, maybe it was better this way; Maven had no idea how he would react when he saw him again.

After all, his mind faltered every time in front of those eyes he knew so well and loved so much, and his convictions hadn’t seemed so right when he finally had the change to feel his warm skin on his own again.

No, he had to stay hidden and disappear forever from his life. Yet Maven knew that this thought wasn’t his, that it wasn’t what he really wanted. It was his mother’s fault. Everything was Elara’s fault, even the disappointment he would’ve inflicted on the person he loved most in the world. Maven knew that he would break his heart, but he couldn’t, he didn’t want to, behave differently.

“Ready?” whispered Farley, making him return to reality.

“We are.” Maven answered, in a firm voice, when in reality, everything inside him seemed about to collapse.

* * *

The soldiers poured into the conduits like a tremendous flood: the voices of one and the other faction overlapped, in screams without meaning, just as at the front, where bullets and blood were the only other thing he knew besides the lamentations of the dying ones. Maven’s image floated between his thoughts, faint as a whisper, but he didn’t have time to think for too long about him, not when a guard loomed over him. His body was pervaded by a shudder, and he knew that the power was there, nearby, it was enough to just take it. He wasn’t afraid: nothing, at that point, could scared him anymore. The worst had already happened; they had lost. At least he could try to take down as many silvers as he can, before someone could stop him. He had thought he knew what hate was, before that day, yet he had never seen eyes so full of that feeling like those of the soldier who was about to kill. In any case, they prevented him from feeling any kind of remorse when he squeezed his neck with such force to break it. He had understood, in the course of the time spent with the Scarlet Guard, that power could be stored: for now, he couldn’t use more than one skill at a time, and certainly the time was limited, but it was a step forward, compared to the nothing he knew at the front. Moreover, if the power was used directly on him, it was almost impossible that he couldn’t store a good part of it. And that was exactly what had just happened; the superhuman strength at his disposal made his head dizzy and his muscles a little lighter, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of being superior to everyone that that anomaly gave him. With time, and with the greater understanding of his power, he had begun to understand what the silvers felt: they knew they were invincible. But they were not. Not as long as someone like him still existed. Perhaps that too was one of the reasons why he had remained hidden for so long, that he had worked in the shadows, following the orders of the Guard, instead of acting alone. He had every right to be scared. And yet, after all that time, after all the people he had to see die, after thousands, or perhaps millions, of dead soldiers among whom his name could have been lost, after all those forgotten wrongs, he felt ready to challenge openly the silvers. The anger, the sadness, all those feelings that had long been dormant, it would’ve been poured on those who had procured them. So he didn’t feel anything when sparks that should’ve been hot started to dance on his hand, he felt nothing when his opponents began to scream, mad with pain, and to roll on the ground in the hope of extinguishing flames that still respond to his will.


End file.
